25 Years Ago in Bonac Sports 09.19.13

August 18, 1988
Among the players in this year’s Huggy Bear tennis tournament in Water Mill will be Pancho Gonzales, Pancho Segura, John McEnroe, Paul Annacone, Ken Flach, Robert Seguso, Tomas Smid, Christo Van Rensburg, Sammy Giammalva, Gary Donnelly, John Fitzgerald, Johan Kriek, Danny Visser, and Sherwood Stewart. Annacone will play with Segura, and McEnroe will play with Gonazales.

September 15, 1988
The seventh Mighty Hamptons triathlon was won Saturday by Pete Slattery of Amityville, last year’s runnerup, in two hours and 40 minutes.

Slattery was the 11th person to emerge from the one-and-one-half-mile swim in the warm, flat waters of Noyac Bay, but by the time the 25-mile bicycle leg was through, he had moved into the runnerup position, on the heels of the swim and bike leader, Doug Rice, of Rumson, N.J. He caught Rice about a half-mile out on the run course through North Haven, but was himself challenged near the race’s end by Mark de Leon of New York City. “Another 200 yards and he would have caught me,” Slattery said afterward.

The women’s winner was a hometown girl — Clare Morey, an East Hampton High School alumna who now lives in Boston where she works as a neuropsychological research technician at University Hospital.

She was saving up to go to medical school, Morey said, in answer to a question, “but triathloning isn’t helping.”

“My goal was to keep from drowning,” said a first-time competitor, Tim Fitzpatrick, of Shelter Island. According to Ray Charron, the event’s director, Fitzpatrick, who finished 42nd, had the days’ fastest split in the 10-mile run, a 59:27.

September 29, 1988
What a week it was for the East Hampton High School field hockey team — a singular week, in fact, as the Bonackers beat Southampton for the first time in recent, or even distant, memory, and positioned themselves nicely for the county playoffs by defeating two Class B schools which play in higher leagues, Bayport and Babylon.

“We’ve tied them, but never beaten them, in my memory,” East Hampton’s coach, Ellen Cooper, said of the Southampton win, opining that the Mariners’ mastery of East Hampton might go back as many as 30 to 40 years. “Don’t quote me,” she said. “I haven’t had a chance yet to look it up.”

Andrea Wyche and Lara DeSanti scored the goals in East Hampton’s 2-1 victory. Apparently it was the first league loss for the Mariners in four years, during which they had compiled a 34-0-2 record under their coach, Chris Holden.